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emotions.
'Have some breakfast.' Leon smiled expansively, obviously not put
out by her greeting. 'And stop griping. It's a lovely day, so why spoil
it?'
Fliss sat at the table, carefully, as though the chair were made of spun
glass, simply because there didn't seem to be anything else to do. She
couldn't understand why he was smiling, looking so completely
relaxed. The woman he'd been with must have been quite something,
she thought sourly. Because, after the greeting she'd given him, she
would have expected him to be hurling the coffee-pot at her head, not
pouring from it, handing her a cup.
'Drink it up, it might improve your mood,' he advised, his dark grey
eyes lazily amused. 'And what have you been doing with .yourself all
week?'
He's treating me like a backward child, she thought rancorously,
waving away the china toast-rack he was pushing towards her.
'What's more to the point, what have you been doing?' She managed
to eject a wealth of cynicism into the enquiry, and was pleased to see
his eyes harden, his expression grow guarded. So, he had been with
some woman! And she had caught him out! But, annoyingly, that
pleasure turned rapidly to pain a deep, deep, tearing pain, the like of
which she had never believed herself capable of feeling again, and
she said tightly, 'Business, you said,' letting him know that she didn't
believe that, not for one moment.
He sighed. 'That's right, business.' Then, softly, leaning back and
crooking one arm over the back of his chair so that the silky fabric of
his shirt pulled taut across his hard-muscled chest, 'We're going to
have to talk, Fliss. And today I've given myself a holiday, so now is as
good a time as any to start. Wouldn't you say?'
'1 don't know what there is to talk about.' She knew she sounded
surly, but she couldn't help that. She was having difficulty with her
breathing. His shirt was open at the neck, and his relaxed pose
revealed more bronzed skin than she cared to see, revealed the crisp
dark body hair that she knew arrowed right down over the flat planes
of his stomach...
Quickly, she dropped her eyes and began stirring her coffee and he
said lazily, 'Then let me toss something into the melting pot for
starters I may have done some manipulating when it came to
forcing the Harlie's board to go for a merger, but I had never, and I
repeat never laid eyes on Ormond before the day I went to his
office to go through his records. It only took a glance through his files
and a couple of phone calls to tell me that Ormond had been
deliberately trying to sabotage Harlie's. If Gerald had done the
necessary digging, he would have found out that Ormond's uncle is
the head of Harlie's closest rival, Tech-Elec and, with all respect,'
his voice took on a withering tone, 'if you had been on the ball you
would have suspected that something was wrong with his department
when sales started to slump to such a degree. You should have been
able to pin down the person responsible. I don't stoop to using
bribery, Fliss.'
'No only to using blackmail on a woman!' she yelped, stung to fury
by the very fact that he was right! Gerald had been so pleased to have
an old friend contact him in those dark days following Netta's death
that he would have hired Tim Ormond even if he'd been an imbecile!
And she well, it had taken her a long time to look beyond the
irritation of Tim's lengthy absences from the office, his lavish
expense- account lunches, to the real meat of the matter. As no doubt
Ormond had planned!
But hearing it from her enemy's lips made it harder to live with, and
she made to get up, to leave the room, but something in his eyes,
something she had never seen there before, something remarkably
like humility, stopped her as he said, 'And that's precisely what we
have to discuss. This so-called blackmail you keep throwing in my
face.'
'So-called?' she repeated loudly, her fine black eyebrows shooting up
at the sheer effrontery of the man,two bright splashes of colour on her
cheeks making her eyes look huge.
'Fliss I don't usually do business that way --'
He captured her hands as they lay bunched into fists on the smooth
beige table-cloth, his touch warming her, his fingers coaxing hers to
relax until her hands opened, nestling quietly within his.
He could so easily reach her on the physical plane, she thought
bitterly, yet in every other respect they were miles apart.
'But, you see, my dear, you left me no option --'
'May I clear now, sir?' Spike trotted in with a tray that looked almost
as big as himself. 'Or do you require more coffee? It's a fine morning,
is it not?' He was beaming, and Fliss didn't give herself top marks for
guessing why. His beloved master had returned, and the errant wife
had clearly mended her ways and was holding his hands across the
breakfast-table in the most satisfactory way. Billing and cooing!
Fliss dragged her hands from Leon's immediately, hearing the edge of
impatience as he agreed, 'Yes, a lovely day,' and then said to Fliss,
'Shall we go through to the lounge and carry on from where we left
off?'
Spike obviously thought that was a great idea. A little more billing
and cooing was just what his master needed Fliss could practically
read his thoughts but routine was routine, and she could have
yelped with laughter when Spike proved her right, saying with
obvious regret, 'Today is the day I give the apartment a thorough
vacuuming starting directly after breakfast, sir. I'm sorry, sir.' But
she didn't have the opportunity to display her mirth, because Leon
was on his feet, knocking over his chair, his mouth a tight line of
frustration.
'Can't a man have any privacy in his own home? Fliss --' In one sharp
movement he reached out for her, dragging her to her feet, his fingers
inescapable, hard. 'Get your things, we're spending the day out!'
And that wasn't such a bad idea, she decided as she fetched her
handbag from her bedroom. She had been looking forward to
spending the day at Kew well, as much as she'd been capable of
looking forward to anything during this last week. With Leon the
outing would be infinitely more agreeable. He could be an excellent
companion when he chose, and he could hardly start yelling at her or
trying to seduce her in the middle of Kew Gardens, where there
would undoubtedly be thousands of other people intent on making the
most of the weather.
'I'd thought of going to Kew,' Fliss said serenely as she fastened her
seat-belt, relaxing back against the leather upholstery and admiring
the competence with which he eased the powerful vehicle from the
car park beneath the prestigious Draker building and into the flow of
westbound traffic.
She flicked a glance at his profile, not put out by his silence because
there really was nothing to say. No amount of talk, discussion,
whatever, could change a situation which was, in her opinion, quite
clear-cut and patently intolerable. He looked quite amazingly relaxed,
but, despite that, he exuded his unique brand of sexual chemistry; it
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